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Thursday, February 6, 2014

Juggling Charms quilt tutorial

Hello and welcome to yet another way to use a charm pack! This simple but effective design can make a fun baby in no time at all or use more charms (or 5" scraps from your stash) to make a larger quilt.

I named this pattern "Juggling Charms" after the charm pack I used, which was Juggling Summer by Zen Chic. To make this quilt (not including optional borders) you will need approximately:

Sort through your charm pack and pick out 36 charms. After you pull out the ones that are basically the same color as the back ground and the ones that aren't very interesting to look at your will probably have just enough left. Chain piece 24 of the charm squares onto the 1.5" strips.

Use your rotary cutter and ruler to slice apart the sashing strips and square them up with the charms.

Then join the remaining 12 single charms to 12 of these creating pairs.

Join the remaining 12 charm+sashing unit to the doubles to make trios (stacks of charms 3 tall) and press.

Sew a 15.5" strips of the 1.5" strips of background fabric onto one side of 3 of the 3-charm-units.

Then sew the other 3-charm-units onto the sashing strips you just attached. Be sure to pin to keep the charms lined up across the middle sashing. Press the blocks.

Next sew the 3.75" strips of background fabric onto both sides of each block. Press and trim. The finished blocks should measure 16".

Lay the blocks out to decide on an arrangement. If you finish the top at this point it will measure 31.5"x47". That was a little too tall and skinny for my tastes so I decided to add borders.

I added a first border of the 1.5" background strips to all sides, and a second and third border to the left and right sides only of a 2.5" strip of coordinating color followed by another strip of the 1.5" background fabric.

With the borders the top measures 39.5"x 49", which looks much more balanced to me. I choose to FMQ the top with square spirals (an Angela Walters design). You can read more about my finished quilt on its post here.

If you have any questions don't hesitate to email me, and if you make anything based off one of my tutorials I'd love to see it!